Smap's Shingo Katori, Bebop's Yamadera in Friends 3D Anime

ANN: "The next film that Takashi Yamazaki (Returner, Always: Sunset on Third Street, Ballad) will direct after this month's live-action Space Battleship Yamato film is Friends: Mononoke Shima no Naki, a 3D computer anime film set to open in Japan next December. SMAP band member Shingo Katori (pictured at right) will star as Naki, a red oni (Japanese demon/ogre), and veteran voice actor Kouichi Yamadera (pictured below, Cowboy Bebop's Spike, Evangelion's Kaji, Pokemon: The First Movie's Mew) will play a blue oni named Gunjō. Yamazaki and Katori had last worked together 11 years ago on a film called Juvenile, Yamazaki's directorial debut."